Terror police investigate whether suicide bomber who struck in Syria came from Crawley

Anti-terrorism police are trying to identify the suicide bomber who struck in
Syria last week and are understood to be checking the Crawley area from
which a number of young Britons have travelled to the country

Debris and damaged buildings line a deserted street near Aleppo's historic citadelPhoto: Reuters

By Keith Perry

12:14AM GMT 12 Feb 2014

Counter terrorism police are probing whether a suicide bomber who struck in Syria last week came from Sussex.

Police from the South East Counter-terrorism Unit are trying to identify the suicide bomber and are understood to be checking the Crawley area from which a number of young Britons have travelled to Syria.

“We are following a number of lines of inquiry but there is no definitive information,” a spokesman told the Times.

Detectives have been studying social media reports of the British suicide bomber.

An online collection has been launched by British supporters to raise money for what are said to be the wife and three children of the suicide bomber, who used the pseudonym Abu Suleiman al-Britani.

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A number of aid convoys carrying humanitarian relief supplies have travelled from Crawley to Syria in recent months but local organisers said they did not believe any local men chose to stay in the country.

Last Friday British jihadists paid tribute to the man who conducted his attack on behalf of the Al-Qaeda aligned Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra.

In the attack, a lorry covered with homemade armour plates was driven at the gates of the main Syrian government prison in Aleppo before the complex came under siege.

New footage showed Syrian rebel forces from Jabhat al-Nusra Front firing heavy weapons and small arms at the prison while the armoured lorry approached picking up speed over rough ground.

Despite a huge explosion the bomb failed to breach the walls of the prison, which has been besieged by rebel forces for more than a year. Several thousand rebel prisoners are thought to be inside.

It comes amid intelligence services warnings that record numbers of British men are trying to travel to Syria to join the civil war.